Guess what this is.

If you said chapter 6, congratulations, you get a cookie. I worked my ass off to get this up tonight, so you're welcome. :D We'll finally receive the much-anticipated Robin and Nami lament in this chapter (though they're not as long as I wanted them to be), as well as finally landing on Myth Island and discovering something incredible about Zoro himself. Keep your eyes peeled, and always bring a banana to a party.

I also have a brief announcement. In my otherwise spare time, I've been working on an AMV and it's almost done… and I'm debating about whether to post it to YouTube. I just make them for fun, but I really want to share it. It's a ZoRobin, if that's any help….?

Review Corner:

NinjaSheik – Always with a nice dash of humor. :D I FOUND IT! I FOUND THE QUOTE! Thriller Bark, Zoro vs. Kuma, episode 376. About five minutes in. Thank you random fan fiction I found putting a LuNa twist on Kuma's appearance at Thriller Bark, and the quote was there! So was all like, O.O MUST FIND! And it was there! YAY! :D :D Anyway, please enjoy.

Nami Swannn – I had to give Zoro something to do… just phasing through stuff and overshadowing isn't all that really impressive, but communication is pretty cool, is it not? Sanji kicks cyclone butt.

Arashi-Storm-Guardian – *chugs wine bottle * Good stuff! I had half a mind to put "skull joke" in there, then thought, nah. Zoro'd kill me. Except he's already dead and can't do anything. GHOST JOKE! Thanks for your continuing enthusiasm and enjoy this update!

Portgas D. Paula – I believe in ghosts because it's fun to. But don't worry, Zoro's a nice ghost. :)

rebecca taylor – Haha, thanks.

Igreg01 – Oh that was you? Haha, I was wondering… I have a future plan for the marines, so they have to know Zoro is deceased. I won't reveal anything, but just know the reaction will be priceless! I feel like an evil God manipulating everything… Oh no. I must have secretly traveled to the moon and taken lessons from Enel. O.O

Shadowangel9999 – Almost lost it, almost lost Sanji, too. I was going to have Zoro able to actually manipulate the bodies themselves and move their limbs as if they were his own, but figured that's too high-tech for a new ghost. Maybe in later chapters, but for now, enjoy Franky's new Battle Franky 4 hundred something!

armaani – Enies Lobby wasn't exactly what I was going for, more like Impel Down, but okay. :) Zoro kicks ass alive or dead, that's why he's my favorite swordsman!

Seis Fleur – Blankie, check. Reindeer plushie, check. Popcorn, check. Ice cream, check. Box of tissues, check. Stress ball, check. Press play, sit back and enjoy!

Red Voident Dragon – Thanks for your reviews for the other chapters prior to this one, it makes me happy. Laughing is what I was going for, so I'm glad I succeeded. Hating me for stopping right there, I've had that before in one of my other fics. It was quite humorous, actually. Grand chapter! I actually find first person easy because it's more relatable ya know? I feel like I can delve deeper into a character's personality, but everyone is different.

Beadwork – And the winner goes to… MUAH! Characterization is my specialty. Thanks for the review!

Those are some awesome people right there, I love you all, my faithful followers!

Chapter 6 - Reconcile Your Heart

"Well, how about this. My 'luck' versus this thing's
'curse.' Wanna see who's stronger…? If I lose,
then I'm just that much of a man anyways."
Roronoa Zoro

Robin woke with a start, sitting up and letting out a yawn, raising her arms above her head. I looked up from my spot near the back of the boat, lounging next to my body and counting the stars through the window. I had tried to sleep but it seemed in this ghostly state I wasn't allowed to.

The historian blinked the sleep from her eyes, staring with hazy vision at the radar and sonar devices built into our simple vessel. Confirming to the best of her knowledge that we were, in fact, on course, she turned her attention to me, or the physical me anyway. It had begun to take it as a bad sign that because I had developed a sense of difference between the physical world and the spirit realm, that I was loosing myself mentally, and before long I wouldn't know anything. Already I was having trouble remembering Kuina's face. A few minutes and I might forget her completely. The thought scared me, and I wrapped my arms around my knees as if that would sustain my memory longer. How long until I forget my crew, my friends?

Robin shuffled around Sanji's snoring form, and Nami propped up against the far wall, her head bowed over her chest in slumber, looking very peaceful. She did her best not to disturb them as she situated herself next to my head. I scooted over to accommodate the extra room. I didn't feel like overshadowing anyone.

"Hello, Kenshi-san," she began. "I always wondered; did you like being referred to as that? I try not to say that as much anymore, not since Enies Lobby. But I still think it's very nice." Robin was silent for a long while, and I mulled over it for a while. No, I hadn't really liked being referred to as simply "Swordsman-san," but I wasn't going to object to it. After all, I didn't really fully trust her until I learned she actually sacrificed herself for us, and that was when I really and truly believed she was on our side and wouldn't double cross us like we - well, I - had initially thought. And then she called me "Zoro" and I realized I liked how my name rolled off her lips, and preferred it to her petty nickname.

Robin looked out the window. "Wouldn't it be strange if you are a ghost and is listening to everything we're saying? That would be interesting, wouldn't it?"

I almost stopped breathing, not that would have mattered anyway. It was like she knew I really was there, or her guessing skills were ridiculously accurate. She wasn't looking at me like Luffy and Brook were, but I remembered back on Thriller Bark when news of my death was first introduced, she hadn't been staring at my body, but rather squinting at where I had been standing on observation. A chill crept down my spine.

Robin was silent again for a while, so long I expected she had fallen asleep again. A rising sun forced its way through the glass, breaking into a tiny rainbow dancing across the back of her hand. She still wore her outfit from Thriller Bark, as did most of the other crew, but her ragged appearance just made her that much more beautiful.

Beautiful?

"There's something I wanted to tell you," she said suddenly, breaking me from my thoughts. "Something the others couldn't hear. Especially not Sanji-san." I was interested suddenly, and leaned forward from my slumped position to listen harder. What was so important that she couldn't tell anyone? Robin was known to keep secrets, but recently she had begun opening up more and more, and I had thought I knew everything worthwhile about her. Excluding her apparently terrifying past, she had nothing to hide directly from us.

"It's been weighing on my mind for some time," she continued. "And I suppose you would know that feeling of having something building up inside you until you feel you may burst with the pressure. But now I think I may have finally found a time to reveal it." Robin examined her fingers, which I noticed seemed like a very un-Robin-like move. "Zoro, I w–"

My body suddenly began to glow. Well, not the entire thing. Just the inside of my left forearm, a light green color seeping through the still damp cloths binding my wounded form. Robin's eyes locked on the supernatural effect, her hands curious as she slowly began to unite the white strips as other limbs bloomed from the shipboards and shook Nami and Sanji awake.

"Mmmmmrugle."

"Wake up, Nami, Sanji-san," Robin said urgently. "It's urgent."

"What is it, Robin-chan?" Sanji mumbled, rubbing his eye.

"Zoro is glowing."

Both the navigator and cook were by her side in an instant, their eyes bright and alert as they watched Robin pull away the final strip to reveal the source of the strange green light. I leaned in as well, taking in a sharp breath with my nakama.

"What is…?" Nami marveled, running a hand across the scarred skin.

Sanji blinked like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "Impossible."

"But very real," Robin whispered.

Numbers had been etched into my arm, glowing with a soft green aura. Three sets of them, separated by a colon, like a digital clock. The farthest right set of numbers was slowly counting down from sixty. As I watched, it hit zero, resetting itself back to sixty as the center number moved from an eight to a seven.

"It's a timer!" said Nami incredulously. "If we're to assume that this is a clock, then this has to be seconds," she indicated the farthest right set. "This minutes…" the middle numbers. "And hours." The farthest left, which beheld an eight.

"So this must be how much time we have left until we've lost Zoro forever," Sanji concluded.

"Eight hours, seven minutes and thirty six seconds," Robin summarized. "How close are we to Myth Island?"

Nami glanced at the log pose programmed into the dashboard. "Almost. About one hour more."

"We can't afford that," Sanji said. "Did Franky give us any paddles?"

After a quick glance, it was confirmed that in the rush of the battle, the shipwright had failed to provide oars. There was a brief discussion, and the three Straw Hats agreed to speed up the process of transportation by each ripping out a board of the ceiling and positioning themselves on each side of the boat. Robin bloomed several long arms from the ship and doubled the speed of the ship. Sanji strapped two boards to his feet and slipped into the water behind the tiny ship, using his feet to paddle rather than his hands.

The sounds of snapping wood was lost in a blur, and my mind suddenly blacked for a moment, temporarily forgetting I even existed. I closed my eyes, struggling to grasp my unknown identity. A series of images raced across the front of my subconscious: a tall old man smiling and handing me a white sword, a thick-set man with a bazooka, two guys with strange haircuts calling me "aniki," a little girl in a striped dress, a blond man with a bowl cut and double chin, a man with an ax for an arm… a boy in a red vest… a man with a big red nose… an orange-haired girl… a giant cat… a small boat with a ram figurehead… The pictures moved too quickly for me to confirm the identities of the people, but there was this feeling at the back of my mind that I knew all of them.

In a flash, my memories suddenly returned. I gave a small cry as my brain was suddenly filled with them, and shook my head, clearing my thoughts. I remembered who I was, what my situation was, and how I had gotten here. But I couldn't recall how I had met my crew… did I meet them at the Baratie? Or was it that fishman who had dictated that island and… what was her name? Nalu? Wait, Nami. I hugged my arms to my chest, my eyes widening in disbelief. How could I forget her when she was standing right in front of me, moving her board back and forth with a look of fierce determination on her face? How long until I forgot the rest of them? How long?

I sat huddled in a corner, my arms wrapped around my knees as if that would stop my random mind blanks. I could remember each one, but every time a sliver of my memory was erased. After the latest, about a minute ago, I couldn't recall anything before someplace called Loguetown.

"There it is!"

I looked up to the sound of the blonde guy… Sanji… calling out to the two women. They both looked up, and I followed their gaze to the small dark mass that had appeared on the horizon. Their confidence restored, it seemed as if the ship seemed to travel even faster. As I watched, the small hill that was the island drew closer and increased in size, both in width and height. From what I could see, four huge towers stood to the four cardinal points, all equal disappearing into the lowest cloudbank. At the base was a huge forest filled with lush flora. A tributary could be seen flowing into the island from the ocean and disappearing through the foliage.

"Let's head into that small river," the orange girl said… Nami. "We'll be safer from prying eyes, and maybe find a town where we can get information."

Robin nodded her agreement, and the ship was turned toward the mouth of the inlet. I felt another wave of memory lapse coming on, and I desperately fought it back as the island finally loomed high above us, the four towers rising high into the sky like the Knock-Up Stream and disappearing into the clouds. I felt a sense of vertigo just looking up at their extreme height. The nausea distracted me from concentrating on the amnesia, and the same process happened again: the images.

A girl with a sword, the boy with the red vest almost beheaded by a weird man with a ridiculously big nose, a tall mountain, a huge whale. And that was it.

Everything before Whiskey Peak had vanished. That sense of having probably over half of your life gone was terrifying. I distracted myself by concentrating on remembering my nakama's names as our tiny ship met the river and slowly navigated our way through the forest. Lucky. Aesop. Nancy. Sandy. Robin. Franky. Brook. And me, Zuko. I grit my teeth. No, some of those were wrong. The first four. Try as I might, their true names evaded me, standing on the tip of my tongue and refusing to leave my lips. It was infuriating. And my own name sounded strange, too. Was it real?

"Oi, Nami. What's the plan?" said the blonde one. Sammy, right? No. Fine. Sandy sounds good. But he had called the orange-haired girl Nami. I had to remember it. Nami! Nami! Nami! Sandy! Sandy! Sandy! Robin! Robin! Robin! Robin!

The addressed orange haired girl turned. "Currently, I have no idea." She looked to Robin, who was watching the forest rush by outside with interest. "What's Zoro's time?"

Zoro. What she talking about me? Robin leaned over, running a hand over my body still lying in the corner, so it must be me. Remember, Zoro! Zoro! Zoro! "Seven hours, forty six minutes. So we're running out of time."

Nancy looked to the forward window. "There should be a town somewhere on this river, and we can figure out something there."

"And if there isn't?"

Nancy looked up toward the four towers. "I'm assuming those are the highest Temples the Legend talked about. Robin, can you recite it again?"

Robin closed her eyes as if remembering. "If a man dies in the honor of another, bring that man to the highest temple on the highest mountain and lay his body in the River Chai. Should that man been in love with a woman in his life, said woman should revive him within the waters as the sun rises. Should this occur, the man whose life was lost shall be returned to the World of the Living. Such a ritual should be completed within forty-eight hours of the man's death."

"Those don't look like mountains to me," said Sandy, staring at the towers.

"We have to assume that that's what it means," Nancy snapped back. She suddenly seemed to realize her tone, and covered her mouth with a hand. "I'm sorry, Sanji-kun. I'm just a bit worked up."

We continued in silence. A mist settled over the river, shrouding us in a blanket of white and hiding the riverbank from view. Nancy steered the boat steadily through the water, her eyes fixed ahead of her. Sandy and Robin sat together by my body, staring occasionally down at it like it would suddenly disappear and their efforts would be in vain. Meanwhile, I was still repeating their names in my mind to prevent another wave of amnesia. Lucky, Nancy, Aesop, Sammy…

The ship suddenly jerked to a halt, grinding hard against something solid beneath us. Nancy cried out as she tumbled from her seat, and Sammy lunged to catch her, his one visible eye transforming to a tiny heart in his head as her breasts were met with his arms. Robin tripped and landed hard next to my body, her elbow on my partially-shredded stomach band. She didn't move from that spot even as Sammy and Nancy corrected their stance.

"What just happened?" Asked Sammy.

"We probably hit a reef," Robin said, finally moving and opening the door, letting in a small stream of fog. "I doubt we'll be able to go any farther on the boat."

The three disembarked our tiny means of transportation, staring around them in wonder. With a quick wave of Nancy's Climatact, the mist was dispersed, and we found we had indeed run against rocks jutting from the bottom of the river. We were standing on a bed of damp moss, what looked like a trail cutting a path through the underbrush leading into the forest. The river continued on, and I spotted something being carried away with the current.

"A basket," said Nancy incredulously. "This island must be inhabited then."

"Perhaps if we follow the river, we will come across a village," Robin suggested.

"Or we could take the trail," Sandy said. "It has to be there for a reason."

I didn't know which route to take. If I ever came to a conclusion, I could always overshadow one of them and force my thoughts into their mind again. I looked toward the trail to examine the footing when a movement caught my eye. I whipped around, instinctively reaching for katana that weren't there. I squinted toward a tree, where I was certain I had seen someone duck behind the trunk. I took a step toward it, when my three nakama finally came to a decision.

"The trail it is," said Nancy. "Who will carry Zoro?"

Zoro. Not Zuko.

"Maybe we could make a crude wagon out of our ship?"

"That would take too long."

"We could hog-tie him to a long stick and carry him between us," was the suggestion that brought silence to Nancy and Sandy. Robin cocked her head a bit like it was perfectly valid option. "Why not?"

Nancy and Sandy exchanged glances. Even without overshadowing them, I could immediately tell they weren't completely against the idea. Neither of them could come up with a valid alternative, and they soon agreed to Robin's barbaric plan. I could only watch as Sandy kicked down a branch from a nearby oak as Robin dragged my body from the depths of the ship. Nancy used my spare bandages to tie my wrists and ankles around the log. Robin and Sandy decided to carry the both ends of the stick, even if Robin wasn't the strongest of the three physically.

Sandy went scouting ahead down the trail, disappearing with a baby den den to keep in touch. Robin went to gather supplies inside the ship, leaving Nancy with my body alone on the banks of the river. She sat silently, the silence broken only by the gurgling of the river and the occasional cry of some strange bird.

"Thank you, Zoro," Nancy said quietly, barely audible enough for me to hear sitting next to her. "Just for always being there, ya know? I've known you the second longest than anyone in the crew, the first being Luffy, but I feel like we've always had like a sibling connection, if you know what I mean. You're always just… there. Not always reliable when it comes to directions, but you kick some serious ass." I mulled over her words. The guy I thought was Lucky was probably the Luffy guy, red-vest boy in the images I always got before my episodes. And my sense of direction was perfect, thank you very much. It was everything else that moved around.

"I've been thinking," Nancy continued. "I'll decrease your debt by ten percent if you come back." She was met by the silence of the forest as I did a tiny happy dance where I sat. Anything to decrease that damn debt! "Fine, forty percent," Nancy complied with the silence. "Happy now?"

"NAMI-SWAN!" Sandy's voice rang out through the trees, and the owner of said voice came racing from around the bend, a grin literally stretching from ear to ear. "It's incredible!"

Robin emerged from the ship, three backs thrown over her shoulder. "What is it, Sanji-san?"

"There is a village," Sandy confirmed with delight, reaching for the pole from which hung my precious body. He took the front of the pole where my feet were bound and lifted it to his shoulder. "But the inhabitants are unlike anything you've seen before!"

Robin distributed the packs before placing the other end of the pole on her shoulder, with a few extra arms for added support. Still, a wince creased her mouth as my weight fell on her shoulders. My head lolled as it became suspended in the air, my wrists straining against the sloppy knot job holding them together. "Who are they?" she asked, as the party moved onward in the direction Sammy had just returned from.

Sammy shook his head. "Not who. What. They're not human."

"Then what are they?" Nancy asked, her voice tinted with fear and curiosity.

Sammy craned his neck to face the women, a light shining bright in his eye. "The stuff of legends."

There's a plot twist. A timer on Zoro's arm, while he is slowly forgetting who he is! This could turn out bad, couldn't it? And what does Robin want to say? Do I feel evil yet? Yes, yes I do. :D I had so much fun with Zoro's new names for his crew. Couldn't resist Aesop and Zuko.

I guess I should also elaborate on that. See, when Zoro forgot when he met the person, for example Sanji, every time their name is mentioned in the memories he does have, he "never learned it" so therefore "can't remember it", and has to replace them with something similar, hence 'Lucky' for Luffy, 'Nancy' for Nami, 'Sammy' and 'Sandy' for Sanji, etc. Does that clear it up a bit? I know it seemed a bit confusing.

Anyway, thanks to all my reviewers for staying with me so long, and please keep 'em coming! I love knowing what you guys think. I'm not going to keep ranting now because it's taking up unnecessary space, so I'll leave you with the chapter title of the next section for you to mull over.

Until then, chao!

Coming Up: Chapter 7 – Over the River and Through the Woods